Print vs. EBooks

[Fenris Technique]

Quote Originally Posted by qcrisp

There's no format race. Obviously, paper, like everything else, can be destroyed, but it doesn't become obsolete. You're quite right - of all the people I know, I am perhaps the least likely to be excited by a new development in technology. There's a fundamentally different mindset at work. I don't really understand what people get excited about. Postscript: I do actually know people who work in data storage, and it seems that this is a big issue (at the moment people are basically winging it in terms of storing things for the long term). There are common sense examples, too. The other day, I lost something I'd been working on for over an hour - on the computer. It just vanished. If I'd been writing that on paper, the paper would not suddenly have vanished into thin air from beneath my pen.

Well . . . I know back while earning my history degree there was some concern over how digital documentation (emails, contracts, periodicals, etc) would be preserved for the long term. Yet these worries seem to stem from the idea that there's a non-digital, non-industrial, Dark Age lurking in man's future which no electronic devices shall survive. A global non-electronic Dark Age if you will . . . something I find unlikely. The whole planet? Unprecedented since the time of the dinosaurs.

As for the problem of digital formats becoming obsolete, we have several that are widely universal - .txt, .rtf, and .pdf. Most electronic devices that display text can handle all three. These formats have been around for decades. No reason to assume that future technology won't maintain backward compatibility, especially if the bulk of electronic text resides in these formats.

As to the loss of work - that sucks. It is a shortcoming of the digital medium. Perhaps balancing out this shortcoming is the rate at which works can be reproduced. You could crank out millions of eCopies of your book before a printing press could print a dozen, and no trees are lost in the process.

Add to this mix the ease with which digital text can be transferred to paper (and the difficulty of reversing this process) and to me, at least, the advantages of the medium are clear.

[Robert Adam Gilmour]

I might be wrong but I think paper seems more durable through all the destruction that could happen. Paper books probably fare better in solar flares, power disasters or if internet becomes more heavily regulated and expensive in some places. Some types of paper do really well under water.

This isn't just about books of course, if some content is only streamed from one source then it's definitely got less chance of surviving than lots of copies of files or physical copies. I better like the chances of all the books scattered around the world.

[symbolique]

nil

[Revenant]

I appreciate this extremely thoughtful discussion. It has been quite enlightening.

[symbolique]

nil

[Kevin]

I had a kindle but dropped it, killed it, and have never missed it.

It's no surprise that a high proportion of forum members would be bibliophiles. The requisite sensitivity and aesthetic is pretty common around these parts.

Count me as one of them. Not only do I love reading books, I love the books themselves for all the reasons mentioned above.

[Fenris Technique]

For all the grandiloquent praise heaped upon the sanctity of cardboard bound paper, one should not lose sight of the larger picture. Literacy is required for a readership to exist. A readership must exist for authors to thrive. eReaders easily promote literacy in places where shipping boat loads of books is neither feasible nor profitable.

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. . . The more books one reads the more is the literacy rate, the more person’s knowledge in specific area increases. As reported in UN Human Development Report (2007-2008) literacy rate differs according to countries. In Africa in general it is less than 70% as shown on Graph. 3. Reasons of this phenomenon can be many, but most importantly it is economic environment and logistics. Most of the modern fiction and educational books nowadays are produced in English, French or German in US or Europe. The cost per book is high, in addition to shipping fees the cost per each book increases and deriving from economic situation of some particular countries it is hard to purchase expensive books. Thusly, invention of e-reader will make it easier to residents of these countries to purchase reading materials, since it is cost efficient; - price of one e-reader is lower than combination of each textbook price. Especially it is true for classic fiction literature, which is mostly free online and can be downloaded easily. As reported by Bain & Company’s Survey (Graph. 1) there is a significant difference in US between the number of books read by people before and after acquiring e-reader, 52% of respondents claim that they read more books than they had before. In all countries surveyed (Korea, US, France, UK, Germany, Japan) this number is 42%. http://www.academia.edu/4747976/The_...z_Baratashvili

eReaders open up a vast wealth of literature to the third world and encourage *more* reading among owners worldwide. Clearly, on this particular forum, I'm in the minority. I'm the guy in the hipster vinyl shop singing the praises of MP3's to the flannel shirts. I get it. But if you look at the impact eReaders have across the globe it's hard to argue that they've been anything but a net gain for writers and readers alike.

[Comrade Tulayev]

Quote Originally Posted by Fenris Technique

eReaders open up a vast wealth of literature to the third world and encourage *more* reading among owners worldwide. Clearly, on this particular forum, I'm in the minority. I'm the guy in the hipster vinyl shop singing the praises of MP3's to the flannel shirts. I get it. But if you look at the impact eReaders have across the globe it's hard to argue that they've been anything but a net gain for writers and readers alike.

I really like your metaphor about being in the vinyl shop. Its definitely one thing to sing the praises of mp3, and its a whole other thing to be chucking vinyl around the store like a frisbee to see it gleefully shatter against the wall. I make this point because, I wonder if there is a view by some on this thread that in praising mp3/e-readers, proponents are perceived as also taking glee in destroying vinyl/ or doing away with physical books. I really don't see it that way... the two can co-exist.

Is there a concern that physical books will disappear altogether with the advent of e-readers?

I think the advancement of this kind of technology really opens up vistas for many folks who wouldn't otherwise be drawn to actual reading.
That being said, I'm still not touching the blasted thing...

I'm definitely sensing a converging of sentiment and theme in both this thread and the "science says stop complaining" thread.

[qcrisp]

I've nothing, personally, against the idea of e-books and paper books existing together, and I am even involved in the production of e-books.

There's a lot I could say on this subject, and I am conscious of lack of time.

One thing I dislike about much of what has happened in the past ten years (in the publishing and writing scenes) is the shift of emphasis from literature as a sanctuary from the world, to literature as just another colony of the allied forces of consumerism and technology (in other words, literature is pushed to the periphery of its own world). For the most part, literature is not shoved in anyone's face. Technology, routinely, is. My more personal feelings on the subject (rather than my more rational ones, which are still not exceptionally positive) are along the lines that at least I once had one (figurative) room on the planet that was free of the lurid one-up-man-ship that is inescapable elsewhere, and that room was literature, but now, I feel as if the gadget fetishist has broken into my room (when he or she has the whole world to play in) and insists on rearranging it according to his/her tastes and even whines as if victimised if I object. "What d'you want this whole room for? Why can't you share? You're so anti-social." Etc.

I remember an advert from early on, when e-readers had newly arrived. It featured someone meeting a friend on his way to the bookshop.

She: Where are you going?
He: To the bookshop to buy the new book by [his favourite author].
She: Oh, is it out? [She takes out a gadget from her handbag and presses a few buttons. Sparkly things happen.] I've already got it!

So the language of competition and replacement (get the new model and now the update and then the update to that) comes to take occupation of what was once a haven. Advertisers of technology always use the language of replacement and play on and nurture that part of the human psyche. "You don't want that old [fill in the blank] around the house any more, do you!?"

[matt cardin]

Quote Originally Posted by qcrisp

One thing I dislike about much of what has happened in the past ten years (in the publishing and writing scenes) is the shift of emphasis from literature as a sanctuary from the world, to literature as just another colony of the allied forces of consumerism and technology (in other words, literature is pushed to the periphery of its own world). For the most part, literature is not shoved in anyone's face. Technology, routinely, is.

Have you seen the following? It's worth reading (which I just did myself -- digitally).

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The novel is, and has always been, a moving target. Once a popular idea about its inner nature or social function takes root, some novelists at least can be relied upon to resist it. The choice of monologue over character perspective, or self-display over empathic connection, is such a refusal. It imagines a different task than the one implied by Rorty’s theory of the novel, of providing communitarian glue, of encouraging the comforting acceptance of difference. Instead, it imagines teaching us how to be separate. We read alone, our received story goes, in order to conjure up what others are like and to soothe our isolation. But if we are not isolated? If we are now relentlessly connected, every marginal identity gaining collective recognition, becoming assimilated, ever more rapidly? If that is where we stand, then something like a stubbornly solitary voice may be welcome, even necessary, telling us that what it means to be human—and what may keep us human—is to feel alone in a strange room, with our seclusion the thing that defines and can save us. -- "The New Fiction of Solitude," The Atlantic, April 2016

On the subject of ebooks vs. paper books when it comes to the relative durability of the medium, my own thoughts have been influenced by Richard Heinberg's cogent reflections on the matter as it relates to the broad subject of cultural transmission and preservation:

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Ultimately the entire project of digitized cultural preservation depends on one thing: electricity. As soon as the power goes off, access to the Internet goes down. CDs and DVDs become meaningless plastic disks; e-books become inscrutable and useless; digital archives become as illegible as cuneiform tablets—or more so. Altogether, digitization represents a huge bet on society’s ability to keep the lights on forever. Without precious kilowatts, what would survive? Sculpture and architecture would persist. Previous generations of sound and visual media might be decipherable: old phonograph records could still be made to emit music, given a hand crank, needle, and megaphone, and silent films would be relatively easy to show. Books and collections of physical newspapers and magazines would fare reasonably well for a few decades, but deteriorating acid-laden paper threatens the survival of about 85 percent of books and nearly 100 percent of newspapers and magazines (ancient books written on parchment and acid-free paper could last many more centuries). It’s ironic to think that the cave paintings of Lascaux may be far more durable than the photos from the Hubble space telescope. Altogether, if the lights were to go out now, in just a century or two the vast majority of our recently recorded knowledge would be gone or inaccessible. . . . [F]or librarians the message could not be clearer: Don’t let books die. It’s understandable that librarians spend much effort trying to keep up with the digital revolution in information storage and retrieval: their main duty is to serve their community as it is, not a community that existed decades ago or one that may exist decades hence. Yet the thought that they may be making the materials they are trying to preserve ever more vulnerable to loss should be cause for pause. -- "Our Evanescent Culture and the Awesome Duty of Librarians," October 2009